


Your Church is a Tomb

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [14]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:36:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6187663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angharad is not used to kindness. Capable doesn't know how to give it, in the Vault where there has been so little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Church is a Tomb

Kindness was rarer than water, in the Wasteland. In the Vault, it was even harder to find, despite the overabundance of water all around them. So when Capable was brought in, shivering, the brand still weeping on her neck, Angharad thought only, _here is someone who will share my hurt. I will not have to carry it alone_. She did not expect kindness from a Wife of the Immortan Joe.

For the first few days, the two circled like dogs ready to fight, not certain what to expect of each other. Angharad was prepared for cowardice, for weeping, sniveling girl who could not bear Joe’s touch. Angharad could not bear it either, but she would not stand for whining.

Instead, Capable lived up to her name. She ate in silence, and her hare daemon was visibly afraid of any living thing larger than a beetle, but she did not cry. When Joe came, to choose between them, she stood with her head bowed and shoulders hunched, her face obscured by red hair so thick it reminded Angharad of blood. But she did not hide, or scream, or any of the other embarrassing things Angharad imagined she might have done.

They were thirty days together before they learned each other’s name. Adara was pacing the tunnel between the Vault door and the glass-roofed room, her agitation a visible manifestation of Angharad’s sullen fury. These periods were not brought on by anything in particular, and happened when she thought too hard or too long about what had been done to her. What had been done to everyone who called Joe a living god.

Capable’s hare had crept down from the loft, which was the red-haired Wife’s usual hiding place during the day, and twitched her ears every time Adara came close. Finally she spoke, in a voice much larger than a creature her size should have had.

“You’ll never do anything but wear a mark in the floor that way.”

Adara snarled, and Angharad jerked around to look at the little daemon in surprise. She hadn’t thought either Wife or hare had the courage to speak so scornfully.

“What would you rather I do?” Adara asked, advancing on the hare. “Should I huddle in a corner and worry at my claws instead?”

“I was only saying that walking close to the door won’t make it open.”

 _“Neither will anything else,”_ Adara said, her voice so heavy with helpless anger that it broke. “We are crows caught in a cage. Ours is just a little bigger than the ones they use to hang up traitors.”

“Do you think we don’t feel it too?” And that was Capable herself, standing on the stairs with her white cloth wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. “We were Gastown runners, before he brought us here. We never spent a moment still that we didn’t wish we were moving. Do you think it’s easy for us to be put in this place?”

Angharad only blinked up at her, a strange feeling like shame stirring in her gut. It had seemed obvious to her that Capable took to captivity, that the thin-faced girl was small and humble and passive as her daemon.

“Gastown,” Angharad sounded out the word like she’d never heard it before, as exotic as a place on the other side of the world to one of the Wretched. “What’s it like?”

“Like the Citadel, I suppose,” Capable said, creeping down another step. “Except less green.”

Angharad laughed, a short, sharp laugh that made the hare jump and Adara curl her teeth in a predator’s smile. “There’s green at the Citadel, all right,” Angharad said, her eyes sharp as steel. “If you’re willing to be locked up in here for it.”

“I don’t know,” Capable said, shivering a little as she hesitated at the bottom of the steps. “If I had been asked instead of told… I don’t know if I would have gone.”

“Don’t say that,” Angharad and Caelai spoke at the same moment, and the two stared at each other. Angharad finished, slowly, not taking her eyes off the hare. “It’s better to be free and Wretched than to live a life like this. Locked up, bruised when he wants it, raped when he wants it, all for a little bit of food. We’re worth more than that. _You’re_ worth more than that.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t have to.” Angharad broke her staring contest to look back at the red-headed Wife with her trembling hands and her wide green eyes. “Everyone is worth more than this place can give. We just happened to be the two caught first.”

She didn’t mention Cheedo, who was caught before she was old enough to know what it was to be a prisoner. She didn’t mention all the other women who had lived in this place, and been thrown from it. All the women who would follow, like night follows the sun, as long as Joe ruled them. For this moment, time stood still, and there was no beginning and no end, just the waiting while something deeper than words unfolded between the two of them.

“My name is Angharad,” she said, at last, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Adara nod. “I am not his Splendid thing.”

“My name’s Capable,” the other Wife said, something stranger than hope shining in her eyes. “And I am not his either.”


End file.
